How I Turn Internal Tools Into SaaS Products

The Problem-First Approach

Every successful SaaS product I've built started as an internal tool. Not because I planned to sell it, but because I had a problem that needed solving.

When I started researching affiliate marketing niches, I found myself spending hours on spreadsheets, manually checking keyword volumes, competition levels, and commission rates. The process was tedious and error-prone.

So I built a simple Python script to automate it. That script eventually became Affiliate Insights.

Why Internal Tools Make Great Products

There are several reasons why building for yourself first leads to better products:

1. You Understand the Pain Deeply

When you're the primary user, you feel every friction point. You know exactly what's annoying, what's missing, and what would make the tool 10x better.

2. You Can Iterate Quickly

Without external users demanding features or stability, you can experiment freely. Break things. Try wild ideas. Find what actually works.

3. You Have Built-In Quality Control

If you use the tool daily, bugs don't survive long. You'll notice and fix issues that occasional users might never report.

The Productization Process

Once an internal tool proves valuable, here's how I turn it into a product:

Step 1: Identify the Universal Problem

My specific use case might be unique, but the underlying problem usually isn't. For Affiliate Insights, my problem was "finding profitable niches." That's a problem thousands of affiliate marketers share.

Step 2: Generalize the Solution

Remove hardcoded assumptions. Add configuration options. Make it work for different use cases while keeping the core value proposition intact.

Step 3: Add a User Interface

Internal tools can be ugly. Products need to be usable by people who didn't build them. This often means building a proper web interface, adding authentication, and writing documentation.

Step 4: Handle Edge Cases

Real users will do things you never imagined. Add input validation, error handling, and graceful degradation.

Key Takeaways

• **Start with your own problems** - Don't build a SaaS looking for a market. Build a tool you need, then find others with the same need.
• **Use it daily** - The best quality control is being your own power user.
• **Don't over-engineer early** - Keep it simple until you know what features actually matter.
• **Monetization comes last** - First, build something valuable. Revenue follows value.

The tools I'm most proud of started as weekend projects to scratch my own itch. The ones I tried to build "for the market" without personal use? Most of them failed.

Build for yourself first. Productize what works.